Budris, Algys (as by Ivan Janvier) – “Thing” (1955)

07/13/2014

Opens with a man watching workers cut apart the radioactive remains of the Statue of Liberty in order to dispose of them at sea (“In the city of New York, even liberty was radioactive”). This man, and his subordinate, are government agents, and they soon meet with a journalist, who knows that they’re after one “Eugene Outlaw,” a survivor of the Providence nuke who is now some sort of superhuman. All three meet up with Outlaw independently (and unbeknownst to the others), who passes on to each of them in turn the alien symbiote that has been giving him his powers – “it likes to be comfortable. When the bomb fell, it was unhappy.” Each, pitying the other two for coming so close only to fail, plans on using their new powers to ensure world peace prevails.